2016 @52Museums Report from Participating Museums #musesocial

Our first 52 Museums Instagram project has wrapped up for this year and overall it has been a huge success, far better than even expected. At the end of each we ask all participants to complete a survey, give us their thoughts on how it went; what went well and what could be done better in the future. We had 44 respondents to this, which is amazing, thank you to everyone who took the time to send in their feedback it really does help us to make it even better for everyone each year.

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who took part and made 52 Museums 2016 such a success, and now with over 13,700 followers on the account here’s to an even bigger and better 2017!

Jump started creativity for the new year, connections with smaller museums, fun convos

We are fairly new to Instagram and this project taught us a lot about planning posts and managing a busy account. We also made contacts with other museums and got to share our collections with a new audience.

I was able to work with new – Western – audiences; we got new followers.

To work on content together with colleagues, a useful and rewarding challenge. We do this normally, but not to this extent.

It may have been better to top load the initial Museums with accounts that already have a large instagram following who need the boost in figures less, so that the institutions with smaller followings later on get the benefit of 52Museums boosting their own account.

It was challenging and made me focus. I now have loads of images to use on our own account as well some really good ideas for our account in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed the comments I received from numerous followers (we don’t receive that many comments on the [Museums] account).

We enjoyed it a lot especially because we could try out a few things we couldn’t on our channel.

This reinvigorated my social media game – it reminded me why I love my job.

Comments:

Sharing our collections with a new audience. Being part of a shared project and connecting with other museums

I enjoyed the chance to interact with museums & people all over the world and also to collate content with the help of colleagues. It has definitely encouraged people to collaborate more on our social media accounts, rather than just see it as the work of the Digital Media team.

Let us talk about the Museum in a way that assumed people know nothing about us (on our own feeds, the assumption is that followers know at least something about what we do already – we started on this one on the basis that they didn’t know anything at all). –

Curiosity: @52museums followers seem to be open-minded and curious, knowing that they follow an account that changes every week.

We had a lot of positive feedback, people from all around the world showed genuine interest in what we do. We could win many new followers for 52museums, which was also really great.

It was fun to be a part of a larger campaign and a community that is so supportive of one another.

This project gave us the opportunity to really focus on our online communication practices, and because of this we are now changing the way we communicate through social media.

Comments from ‘Maybe’s’:

Very time consuming and we may not have the resource to do it again depending on if and when it occurred.

It was a lot of work, so I’d like to have a go again, but it’d depend on workload.

It is quite hard for a small museum with a low budget to spend time organizing materials and manage events like this

Most and least popular posts from participants:

What were your most popular posts of the week?

Comments:

Really visually interesting ones did well, and those that were a little more provocative.

The posts featuring images taken by our visitors.

The videos, before and after restoration images, and, of course, our cat Edmund.

A shot of our stairs. Might have set the 52Museums record so far #Justsayin

What were your least popular posts of the week?

Comments:

Posts about digital jobs and posts with visitors

Anything that seemed like a ‘marketing shot’ or was less visually interesting.

Ones featuring people, particularly where it wasn’t clear where the photos were based

For me, the ones first thing in the morning (UK) were the least popular.

Graphics, logos, and shots of people without art

Unfortunately, a great photo of two women of our staff:

Photos highlighting our programs and the staff

Post that were published early in the morning

Posts about educational programming

Posts on museum ‘products’ like tours, programs, etc

The posts about the work we do with the public and about our research were the least popular posts…and that was not unexpected. Some of the posts with fewest likes actually received more comments/questions.

Those with actual people in them. Sounds weird, but that is what we noticed.

Final Words:

As you can see @52Museums was an overwhelming success for participants. Not only did we get to see awesome sharing internationally, museums were able to learn a thing or two along the way.

CultureThemes

CultureThemes.com
CultureThemes runs a hashtag on social media (Instagram, Twitter and Facebook) once a month to promote and engage with museums and visitors.

MuseumCamp

MuseumCamp
An unconference for people interested, working, want to work or who like to visit museums, art galleries and cultural venues. It’s a cakefest.

MuseumNext

MuseumNext 2018
MuseumNext is a global conference on the future of museums. Since 2009 it has acted as a platform for showcasing best practice today to shine a light on the museum of tomorrow. Our Museum Conferences have acted as a catalyst for change within the museum